Nerf Shooter Thread!

Why do shooters seem overpowered at lower-mid-levels?

Because of how RNG for item pieces work.

If you draw an item piece, there's a 58% chance it will be a red item piece - a higher chance than yellow, green and blue items combined. So, for people using T1 legendaries in their setup, they're going to load up on strong weapons before you load up on strong yellow, green or blue items. Because of the number of weapon slots and variety of weapons they can use, shooters are better able to take advantage of this fact.

Would it be nice (or more fair) to select the item piece you want? Maybe. Should it be changed to be an equal chance for each type of item piece? No. This would make it extremely difficult for yellow boats to get the specific weapons they need and want - as there are far more weapons than other items.

Regardless, this advantage is temporary.


Is firebomb overpowered?

I fully acknowledge how annoying FB spam can be, but that's the way the skill tree is setup. If you want to use FB properly, it's going to cost you an inordinate amount of HPs .. thus, it is a better strategy to use multiple firebombs (as opposed to one) and stay behind cover since you're giving up a great deal of durability to use that item. I have spoken at length on how the skill tree should be changed to avoid forcing people into this lower-skill strategy, but I digress.

As you move up the ranks, you will see how strong the fixer pulse is. For point damage players (like many yellow boats), it is nearly impossible to defeat a group of tightly huddled unfriends getting repeatedly healed by pulses. Firebomb is the only true counter to the pulse, so it is a necessary evil. Moreover, as yellow boats get better turbos, OBs, and nitros, firebomb becomes less of a concern, as the hit rate becomes negligible. Likewise, those shooters using triple firebombs become virtually useless on covered maps - and become perfect targets for yellow boats.

 

What are the repercussions of a significant nerf on shooters?

Death Spiral:
For f2p players, they will not be able to switch to yellow boats in a timely fashion. And, they will begin tanking infamy ... to the point where they quit.

For a game struggling to attract new players and retain the players they currently have, nerfing the ships of whatever percentage (40-50-60-70%) of the existing players would likely be a death sentence for the game.

F2p gets Harder:
Secondly, as I stated above, shooters have the initial advantage because of how items are RNGd, but, once yellow boats get decent yellow and blue items, they become dominant against shooters and defenders.

If you look through the leaderboard, there are quite a few f2p yellow and green boats that hit high infamy marks while still using rare items. There are far fewer shooters (if any) placing high on the leaderboard with rare items. In fact, the only shooters to touch the top 10 are typically setup specifically to deal with double bubbles (with dual railguns).

If all these shooters switch over, especially the paying shooters, f2p yellows will lose their advantage and start tanking infamy because their item levels are less able to compete with p2w yellow boats.

Why?

Yellow on yellow fights are not fun. The winner is typically the player with the higher level items, rather than the higher skilled player. Higher level weapons, Tshields, bandages all offer huge advantages.

So you'll be fine ... as long as you have that T4+ legendary grenade ... but you'll likely never reach the top of the ladder otherwise.

An apparently not well known fact is that high level yellow boats love matches against shooter teams and hate matches against all yellows. They can take full advantage of their fire combos on slower moving, bigger ships rather than enduring drawn out battles where the vast majority of their shots are absorbed.

 

This is coming from someone in the process of switching to yellow boats ..

I don't want shooters to go away. It'll make my life harder.

Not to mention that it seems like alienating half the players in the game is a bad idea .. I would like the game to still be around in a year.

 

That is simply not true. Shooter (and Fire Bomb) weren’t anywhere near as powerful before the update (just a couple of weeks ago), and they were still ridiculously overplayed. None of the apocalypse you just discribed was taking place.

Since the update, the turret speed, the agility, the projectile speeds. It all buffed Shooter tremendously, I thought they were OP before the update, now they’re just ridiculous.

No one is being forced to abandon ship just because a bit of balance is restored.

 

I've spoken to why it might be more difficult to play mid to low level yellow boats .. I'm sure the devs can see the average infamy changes of different boats before and after the update. I haven't noticed fewer yellow boats or more shooters since the update - or any difficultly in yellow boats dominating the top of the leaderboard.

I have also not seen small "balance" changes suggested in this thread. I have, however, seen significant or material shooter nerfs suggested - to the point that would have a serious affect on shooters - which would lead to what I suggested.

As far as OP items go .. you're a big fan of bay stats ...


So, maybe it's the top three items on that list that need a "balance" change ... not the #8 on that list (with a 40-50% smaller usage rate).

 

Please don't get me wrong but I think the old saying 'The grass looks always greener on the other side of the fence' is so true.

For me, double-bubble enforcer is the last thing that I want to encounter especially in 1 vs 1 even with my shooter being 10k+ health and 5 cannons loaded.
I am even doubtful that I can barely win an enforcer with half of my health.

Anyways, seeing 10 shooter battle will make my eyes sore as well. haha.

 

I’m not sure what you class as ‘mid to low’ level, but I’m certainly not at a level where t1 legendaries are a big problem. Most of my opponents are mk7s with t5 Epics. I’ve even had a few games featuring Banderas, Webb, Grey Storm, Black Tail (and that other Black Tail). Now I’m not saying I’m their level, but if I can end up in their games then I’ve gotta be at least mid-high.

The agility update was a huge change to the game, completey unprecedented. It has already had a serious affect on Speeders (the few that were left). Shadow Moon has quit. I would love to hang around and max out my gear, but my games are terrible at the moment, and the lack of balance between ships is painful to watch.

Absolutely, EC, Flare and Blast probably do need a “balance”. It’s sickening how quickly Shooters and Enforcers are able to melt all my hp with those combos. However, nerfing those items would leave Speeder with even more of a DPS problem than it has already. I’m perfectly fine with nerfing those items, so long as there are other adjustments to ensure the ships are still balanced.

————

I don’t play Enforcer, I play Speeder. While it’s fun to say ‘yellow boats’, they’re definitely not the same thing.

 

Let's look at this another way. While there is a 58% chance of getting a Red item, 63% of a Shooter's slots are Red. Moreover, what are the odds that out of 20 different Red items that you can build up 5 high level ones? It took me 17 months and 12,000 games to get a SINGLE T5E weapon (just last week). I built a T5E Shield long ago... and if I had enough Epic cells could build a T5E Turbo and a T5E small shield. I likely could have built several Green and Yellow T5E items by now, as I initially scrapped a bunch before dabbling in Speeder and Enforcer... and I already built up 4-5 of most Epic yellows. That's just my experience. Let's go over the other boats...

Speeder - You guys get an abundance of chances to fill those two weapon slots, so you can focus on a handful of weapons and build up those two high level ones fairly quickly. What you claim is a disadvantage is actually an advantage. The Blue items are only 4 varieties (3 slots), and the Yellow are 6 (3 slots), so focus is fairly easy.

Enforcer - Similar to Speeder, and with 3 1-slot weapons it's very easy to focus on the ones you need.... and with only 2 Blue slots, and 4 options, it's extra easy to build those up as well.

Defender - 3 weapons, and 5 Blue slots make this the anti-shooter. The Agility update was a buff to Defender, freeing up blue slots for more Shields/Bandages. I've got enough to build 3 T5E Blue items... and another couple of T2E items, so this boat seems simple to level up as well.

Fixer - 2 Red, 1 Yellow, 3 Green and 2 Blue. You have one training tree for Green items, and in my experience all the Guild Raffles shove green pieces and items in my face, so it's super easy to get them. I've already illustrated it's been easy to get Blue items, and only 2 Red make that super easy to get a high level right away. Yellow, just pick one and focus on it. It's why in mid game this is the fastest infamy climber.

So there you go... my experience laid down in black and white. It's been a disadvantage to me as a Shooter trying to fill all those Red slots relative to what the other boats can do.

The key is this.. if the Devs wanted to sway the odds of getting one type vs the other, they can... and they in some cases they do with disproportionate amount of Greens in Guild raffles, Greens in Event perks. Even in all the Containers I've opened I've seen equal or less Red items compared to all 3 other colors, contrary to odds. What I'd really like to see is the ability for all players to use multiple boat types... but unfortunately Battle Bay is setup to focus on one boat, and build it very, very slowly. Two T5E's and I'm already out of power cells... so while I was hoping to level up other boats I've been resigned to the fact that the game makes sure that's not possible.

 

Your personal experiences does not determine that other people will have the same results as you. It all depends on rng. There is 20/34 chance of red items, 4/34 chance of blues, 6/34 of yellows, and 4/34 of greens, so mathematically you can calculate that there is a 1/34 chance of getting each item. Some people may be more lucky getting a certain amount of one type of weapon that they don't use while getting almost none of the weapon that they do use. For example, throughout my battle bay experience, I've gotten tons of epic big Berta which I don't use (probably enough to get to t4 if I had kept them all, and to me, that's a lot), yet I've never gotten a single epic explosive cannon which I do use, so it may seem like in not getting as much weapons as other categories, but that's probably not true. But again, these are just my experiences and not everyone will experience the same thing, but I'm just giving an example.

 

Low, mid, or whatever level isn't meant as an insult.

It simply meant that everyone has a full loadout of the same level/rarity of equipment (i.e. "high-level" meaning max epics to T2 legendaries).

If speeders have capped speed and max yellows, and enfos have max epic bubbles, single firebombs/mortar shots can't touch them, nor can 80-90% of the other weapons. Shooters using rares face the same issues as speeders using rares do against max epic loadouts.



Other than fire bonus damage, what are the two of the strongest items in the game?

Repair Pulses and Double Tshields
How are Repair Pulses kept in check?

• Firebombs. With 5 opponents squatting in the heal radius of multiple pulses, no boat can get close enough to do any real damage without being annihilated. So, firebombs can either negate the mass healing or make opponents scatter. (Sniper and Rail sniping the fixer is a less effective alternative).

How are double Tshields (somewhat) kept in check?

• Shooters - either with mortar/FB spam (on maps where enforcers have no cover), or with dual rail and multiple grenade setups.

Why does this matter?

• There is a direct relationship between Firebombs and Repair Pulses (which is balanced atm imo).
• There is an inverse relationship between the number of enforcers and the number of speeders/defenders.

We all know this isn't how it works ... but assuming for a second that you could trade one shot for one Tshield (or 1-to-1 trade), defenders have one shot left, speeders have zero, and shooters have 3 vs the enforcers 3 shots.

In other words, for obvious reasons, speeders and defenders have difficulty dealing with enforcers (with the slight exception for elite grenade spammers). As more enforcers appear in the bay, there will be fewer speeders and defenders finding success. As fixers and shooters the favorite meals of speeders, high-level speeders prefer to see more of those ships in the bay over yellow boats - in addition to boats keeping enforcer numbers (i.e., speeder kryptonite) somewhat in check.


**Assuming equal item levels. Ship with underleveled items will struggle more often .. and ships with T3-4 legendary equipment will succeed more often**




So, to reiterate .. the speeders with lower rarity/level yellow items or turbos might have issues vs max epic weapons or FBs .. but that's less of a balancing issue than it is an item disparity issue (that I explained in a previous post).

As odd as it sounds, removing turbos from the game and capping each ships respective speed might go a long way towards solving that issue - assuming lower level speeders are being hit by FBs.

 

I agree with most of this .. especially about the green item pieces and perks in raffles ..

But my point was that shooters can use whatever epic items they happen to get 5 dups of (with moderate success), whereas there are only 3 main weapons used by enforcers, speeders, and defenders ..

So it's not unusual that they would be facing max epic weapons while they still have rare yellow and blue items.

 

My speeder is pretty damn successful against enforcers, especially those double bubble ones without nitro.
Shooters are much tougher to deal with.

 

With that an anti-enforcer build, I'd imagine so .. which is exactly my point.

There are far more effective anti-shooter setups you could use, but you're geared up to face what you consider your biggest threat - enfo bubbles.


I applaud your originally and success with the setup ... but I wonder how well a swift torp with a few frost perks would do over your tri-torp. It would have to be easier to hit and for more damage (unless you're splashing them with all 3 tri-torps fairly often).

 

This list is outdated. Read the blog post.

 

It's been 75 hours .. and he's updated for the gatling gun.. and the numbers are fairly consistent with what they've always been.

Obviously blast cannon and grenade usage has probably continued their upward trend, but I doubt if there are any other significant changes.

 

Swift works really well too, but somebody has to show the old tritorps a bit of loving
Tritorps have the added feature of area control, and the occasional tasty 10k+ hit.
I primarily play a scout and support role so I'm looking at hitting multiple enemies wherever I can.

 

The item give rate isn't in proportion to the item population per color in my experience. I have a big inventory of items to mitigate RNG as you state, initially only tossing mortars and mines, and it still took 17 months to get to 6 of something. Like you I've also received a bunch of Big Bertas.... 2 in the past 2 days in fact... and I've scrapped a bunch of them in the past. I've had major issues getting both Rare and Epic Snipers in this game, but over the long haul I seem to have received everything in proportion.. meaning I could build a 4TE of almost every item if there were enough Power Cells.

I have actually documented most of the item distribution I've received from Raffles, Event Perks, Containers, and I do believe that is likely the distribution for everyone, and why wouldn't it be? In fact I just updated my Epic Containers thread with the latest and (spoiler alert) it isn't proportional to the # items per color: 2R, 3B, 3G, 2Y. I also have every single one of my Guild Raffle draws documented... I could post that distribution as well if you are still in doubt, noting that I try to go for only those Raffles with a prevalence of Red items. I'll give you a hint: I didn't get the 58% Red item or piece take rate that would be the correct proportions. I've received only 5 Epic items in 137 draws: 2 Red, 2 Green, 1 Yellow. Very similar proportions to the Container item distribution, heavy on Yellows and Greens, and lower than 1:12 hit rate, and lower than the proportion of Red items. Greens, Yellows, Blues, all readily available as much as Reds. I am pretty sure Red pieces from RNG boxes are given out proportionally though.. it's the only reason it keeps up with the other colors.

This is why I can confidently dispute the "ease" of filling up those 5 Red slots.